Weblogs
Weblogs and their ecosystem are expanding into the space between email and the Web, and could well be a missing link inthe communications chain. One blog may be arunning commentary on current events in a specific arena. Another may be a series of personal musings, or political reporting and commentary, such as Joshua Micah Marshall’sTalkingPointsMemo.com. One blog may be aPersonal blogs also tend to be part of running conversations. One blogger will point to another’s posting, perhaps to agree but often to disagree or note another angle not found inthe original piece. Then the first blogger will respond, and other bloggers may join the fray. As tools are developed to help people follow those discussion threads across different sites, the cross-fertilized conversations will spread both in numbers and complexity even more quickly than they do today. The most popular individual bloggers draw tensof thousands of visitors daily. It’s safe to say that several million people have at least tried blogging. How many do it regularly is unclear, but the best bet is several hundred thousand. The addition of audio, video, animation, and other multimedia to weblogs has been an obvious move. But it’s taken some time for these mediums to become part of the blogging toolkit. Bandwidth (or lack thereof) is the main reason. But as networks improve, we can take for granted that what technologists call “rich media” formats will infiltrate. Blogging software has evolved a great deal from the first products of Dave Winer, Evan Williams, and other pioneers to the genre. A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site is a set of related web pages served from a single web domain. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet address known as a Uniform Resource Locator. All publicly accessible websites collectively constitute the World Wide Web. A webpage is a document, typically written in plain text interspersed with formatting instructions of Hypertext Markup Language. A webpage may incorporate elements from other websites with suitable markup anchors. Webpages are accessed and transported with the Hypertext Transfer Protocol which may optionally employ encryption to provide security and privacy for the user of the webpage content. The user's application, often a web browser, renders the page content according to its HTML markup instructions onto a display terminal. The pages of a website can usually be accessed from a simple Uniform Resource Locator called the web address. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although hyper linking between them conveys the reader's perceived site structure and guides the reader's navigation of the site which generally includes a home page with most of the links to the site's web content, and a supplementary about, contact and link page. Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription websites include many business sites, parts of news websites, academic journal websites, gaming websites, file-sharing websites, message boards, web-based email, social networking websites, websites providing real-time stock market data, and websites providing various other services (e.g., websites offering storing and/or sharing of images, files and so forth). Wiki “It’s a tool for collaboration,” “A wiki (sometimes spelled “Wiki”) is a server program that allows users to collaborate in forming the content of a Web site. With a wiki, any user can edit the site content, including other users’ contributions, using a regular Web browser.” The Wikipedia, a massive encyclopedia, is the biggest public Wiki, but far from the only one. There are Wikis covering travel, food, and a variety of other topics. You can find a Wiki category page on Cunningham’s site. One of the best examples of a Wiki as a collaborative tool to create something useful is the Wiki Travel site, which brings together a variety of viewpoints from around the world. Wikis become easier to use, they will become a particularly well-suited tool to compile information from disparate sources, and collected by people in different physical Wikis are making inroads on campuses as well. My co lecturer at the University of Hong Kong set up a Wiki for our students to use as a planning platform for the 2003 class project. The project looked at a controversial proposal to fill in more of the harbor for development. Students posted their outlines and story proposals on the Wiki and used the site to flesh out the ideas. Instructors could watch over their shoulders without interfering except to offer guidance. The Wiki was perfect for this task. This 2[[|Content Creation Wiki]] is focused on 22.com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns"AndHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns" Patterns"People Projects HYPERLINK ".com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns"People Projects HYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns"AndHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns" Patterns"AndHYPERLINK ".com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns"People Projects HYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns"AndHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PeopleProjectsAndPatterns" Patterns" Patterns in 2[[|Software Development]]. The idea of a "Wiki" may seem odd at first, but dive in, explore its links and it will soon seem familiar. "Wiki" is a composition system; it's a discussion medium; it's a repository; it's a mail system; it's a tool for collaboration. We don't know quite what it is, but we do know it's a fun way to communicate asynchronously across the network. To find a page on any specific topic, go to 2[[|Find Page]]. To see an auto-generated list of pages which have changed recently, try 2[[|Recent Changes]]. If you want a short list of randomly-selected pages, try 2[[|Random Pages]]. 2[[|CategoryHYPERLINK ".com/cgi/wiki?CategoryCategory"Category" ]] is the top level of page categorization; you can use it to delve deeper into the site. Edit pages by using the 2[[|Edit Text]] link at the bottom of the page you wish to edit. Don't worry too much about messing up, as the original text is backed up and can be easily restored (meaning, everyone can see the changes made, and will be able to correct mistakes, erase, and so on, if necessary). The 2[[|Text Formatting Rules]] are quite simple, and the 22.com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners"ForHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners" Beginners"Tips HYPERLINK ".com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners"Tips HYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners"ForHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners" Beginners"ForHYPERLINK ".com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners"Tips HYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners"ForHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TipsForBeginners" Beginners" Beginners will help you learn to apply them gracefully. You'll probably want to start by editing pages that already exist. The 2[[|Wiki Sand box]] is set aside for editing practice. Go there now to try it. (Please don't edit this page; changes here will likely be reversed within a few minutes). Once you've made a couple of updates, you'll be ready to participate in discussions on the "Wiki", and before you know it you will be 2[[|Adding New Pages]]. Please read 2[[|Wiki System Notice]] for the latest information regarding the operation of this site. This site's 2[[|Wiki Engine]], 2[[|Wiki Base]], has since spawned other 2[[|Wiki Engines]], which themselves have become a popular way to document things. If you want information on the content you can expect to encounter, take a look at 2[[|On Topic]] and 2[[|Off Topic]]. 22.com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews"In TheHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews" News"Wiki HYPERLINK ".com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews"Wiki HYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews"In TheHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews" News"In TheHYPERLINK ".com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews"Wiki HYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews"In TheHYPERLINK "http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiInTheNews" News" News collects mentions of this site in the wider world. The read-write web It was a pale imitation of what we’ll be able to do as the tools become more sophisticated, but it worked. To understand the evolution of tomorrow’s news, we need to understand the technologies that are making it possible. For people who simply want to be better informed, the Internet itself is the key We have access to a broader variety of current information than ever before, and we can use it with increasing sophistication For those who want to join the process, the Web is where we merely start. The tools of grassroots journalism run the gamut from the simplest email list, in which everyone on the list receives copies of all messages; to weblogs, journals written in reverse Chronological order; to sophisticated content-management systems used for publishing content to the Web; and to syndication tools that allow anyone to subscribe to anyone else’s content. The Internet, for the first time, gives us many-to-many and few-to-few communications. The Internet, in particular, is becoming the environment in which the new tools function, a cosystem that is gaining strength from diversity. The Web, as it grew up in the 1990s, was a powerful publishing system that journalists of all kinds used to great effect, and still do. But the larger toolkit is part of an expanding; thriving ecosystem mail list is a news source of enormous value to his readers. Mail lists differ from blogs and standard web sites in at least three respects. First, they serve a specific community, the subscribers, and the community can make the list private. Second, they tend to be narrowly targeted, such as the SARS list. Third, they are “pushed” to subscribers’ email inboxes. Some are moderated; most are not. The key thing about lists is that they tend to be populated by a combination of experts in a given field or topic, and by avidly inter ested lay people. This can be a potent combination. Unlike mail lists, online forums, such as Usenet newsgroups, are open to all comers. Individual forums are hosted by companies, user groups, activists, and just about any kind of interest group one can name. Some are moderated, and many are valuable for spotting trends and getting answers to specific questions. From a journalism perspective, mail lists and forums can amplify the news. They can be an early warning. They can simply be excellent background data. But their value should never be underestimated. Web 1 Was an early stage of the conceptual evolution of the World Wide Web, centered around a top-down approach to the use of the web and its user interface. Socially,needed users could only view webpages but not contribute to the content of the webpages. According to commode and Krishnamurthy "content creators were few in Web1 with the vast majority of users simply acting as consumers of content." 10%[[|5]]B[[|1]]%[[|5D""%22%5B1%5D"1HYPERLINK "%22%5B1%5D"]] Technically, Web 1.0 webpage's information is closed to external editing. Thus, information is not dynamic, being updated only by the webmaster economically, revenue generated from the web was made by concentrating on the most visited webpages, the head and software's cycle releases.10%[[|5]]B[[|2]]%[[|5D""%22%5B2%5D"2HYPERLINK "%22%5B2%5D"]] Technologically, Web 1.0 concentrated on presenting, not creating so that user-generated content was not available. Web2 O'Reilly contrasted this with Google, a company that did not at the time focus on producing software, such as a browser, but instead on providing a service based on data such as the links Web page authors make between sites. Google exploits this user-generated content to offer Web search based on reputation through its "PageRank" algorithm. Unlike software, which undergoes scheduled releases, such services are constantly updated, a process called "the perpetual beta". A similar difference can be seen between the Encyclopedia Britannica Online and Wikipedia: while the Britannica relies upon experts to create articles and releases them periodically in publications, Wikipedia relies on trust in anonymous users to constantly and quickly build content. Wikipedia is not based on expertise but rather an adaptation of the open source software adage "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallowHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27_Law"", and it produces and updates articles constantly. O'Reilly's Web 2.0 conferences have been held every year since 2004, attracting entrepreneurs, large companies, and technology reporters. The term Web 2.0 was initially championed by bloggers and by technology journalists, culminating in the 2006 HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_(Time_Person_of_the_Year)"TIME magazineHYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_(Time_Person_of_the_Year)" Person of The Year (You). That is, TIME selected the masses of users who were participating in content creation on social networks, blogs, wikis, and media sharing sites. Web 2.0 Websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. By increasing what was already possible in "10.[[|0"Web HYPERLINK "%22Web%201.0"1HYPERLINK "%22Web%201.0".HYPERLINK "%22Web%201.0"0]]", they provide the user with more user-interface, software and storage facilities, all through their browser. This has been called "network as platform" computing. Major features of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, user created web sites, self-publishing platforms, tagging, and social bookmarking. Users can provide the data that is on a Web 2.0 site and exercise some control over that data. These sites may have an "architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. Some scholars have made the case that Web 2.0 can be described in three parts: • Rich Internet application (RIA) — defines the experience brought from desktop to browser whether it is from a graphical point of view or usability point of view. Some buzzwords related to RIA are Ajax and Flash. • Web-oriented architecture (WOA) — is a key piece in Web 2.0, which defines how Web 2.0 applications expose their functionality so that other applications can leverage and integrate the functionality providing a set of much richer applications. Examples are feeds, RSS, Web Services, mash-ups. • Social Web — defines how Web 2.0 tends to interact much more with the end user and make the end-user an integral part. • What is Web 3.0? One difficulty in nailing down a definition or metric for evaluating Web 3.0 is the lack of a clear, distinct definition of Web HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/what-is-web20.htm"2HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/what-is-web20.htm".HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/what-is-web20.htm"0. Most people agree what Web 2.0 is an interactive and social web facilitating collaboration between people. This is distinct from the early web (Web 1.0) which was a static information dump where people read websites but rarely interacted with them. If we distill the essence of change between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, we can derive an answer. What is Web 3.0? It is the next fundamental change both in how websites are created and, more importantly, how people interact with them. Many people believe that Web 3.0 is just around the corner. But it took over ten years to make the transition from the original web to Web 2.0, and it may take just as long for the next fundamental change to reshape the web. The phrase "Web 2.0" was coined in 2003 by Dale Dougherty, a vice-president at O'Reilly Media, and the phrase became popular in 2004. If the next fundamental change happened in roughly the same time span, we will be breaking into Web 3.0 sometime around 2015. So, asking ourselves "What is Web 3.0?” we must realize that we will experience a lot of change before it emerges. For example, not only will you have replaced the computer on your desk because it became way too slow, but you will probably have replaced its replacement for the same reason. In fact, the sum of all human knowledge may very well have doubled by then. Having answered "What is Web 3.0?” we proceed to the much more difficult question, "What will Web 3.0 be?" The truth is that predicting the Web 3.0 future is a guessing game. A fundamental change in how we use the web could be based on an evolution of how we are using the web now, a breakthrough in web technology, or just a technological breakthrough in general. But, we can nail down some likely scenarios. Sadly, this is probably the most likely way that we'll be using the term 'Web 3.0' in the future. Web 2.0 has already achieved monumental buzz, and '2.0' has already been attached to Office HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/webapplications/a/whatis_office20.htm"2HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/webapplications/a/whatis_office20.htm".HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/webapplications/a/whatis_office20.htm"0, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile 2.0, Shopping HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/social-shopping.htm"2HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/social-shopping.htm".HYPERLINK "http://webtrends.about.com/od/web20/a/social-shopping.htm"0, etc. As the Web 2.0 buzz declines, we will probably be seeing websites popping up claiming to be 'Web 3.0' hoping to create a new buzz. Many people ponder the use of advanced artificial intelligence as the next big breakthrough on the web. One of the chief advantages of social media is that it factors in human intelligence. For example, social bookmarking as a search engine can provide more intelligent results than using Google. You are getting websites that have been voted on by humans, so you have a better chance at hitting a good website. However, because of the human factor, the results can also be manipulated. A group of people could vote for a particular websites or article with the intent of making it more popular. So, if artificial intelligence can learn how to separate the good from the bad, it could produce results similar to social bookmarking and social news sites while eliminating some of the bad elements. There is already a lot of work going into the idea of a semantic web, which is a web where all information is categorized and stored in such a way that a computer can understand it as well as a human. Many view this as a combination of artificial intelligence and the semantic web. The semantic web will teach the computer what the data means, and this will evolve into artificial intelligence that can utilize that information.